Tag Archives: Human Behavior

This still seems about as salubrious a means of replacing a prez as the one we’ve been using. Time we bellied up to the bar and admitted we love being governed by dynasties of aristocrats. And that aristocrats in this country are anyone who’s a celebrity and rich. Michael Douglas for prez, for instance, because he’s got such a wide range of experience in the movies qualifies him. Provided he has a sexy wife to succeed him when some returned US Navy SEAL offs him with a sniper rifle. Recall, Lee Harvey Oswald and Charlie Whitman were both ex-Marines.

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read. Not all of this is humor.

Must have been November, 1962, election day in Massachusetts though we didn’t know it. Three young GIs in uniform, Tony Bozza, Julio Ditata and I were off work. We lived in a brownstone house converted to apartments on Beacon Street, so we wandered over to an ice-cream joint on Boylston Street across from Boston Plaza.

As we finished off our ice cream we saw police cordoning off Boylston Street, people drifting in behind them. Something was happening so we rushed out for a front-line position. Asked one of the cops what was going on.

King/President Kennedy was in town. Came to vote for his brother for the Senate. Maybe State Senate. I can’t recall for certain. JFK was going to stay at the Plaza Hotel across the street. “Salute when he drives by

Later this year when the petrodollar crashes and burns most of you will probably be hoping the Mexicans will revise their immigration laws. Likely you’ll recall the last time the US economy fell on really hard times how US workers drifted to Mexico and further south looking for work. It wasn’t a lot better there, but there was less English speaking competition for jobs.

Here’s an example from the Bogart movie, Treasure of Sierra Madre:

Things haven’t really changed much, have they. Except the guy doing the hiring and cheating them out of their pay is a gringo in Mexico instead of a gringo in the US.

I’m betting those Mexicans will be tickled pea-green to have gringos coming down to work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about us veterans lately, possibly because of the recent VA fiasco including my own healthy part of it. Which put me into close proximity with a lot of other old model vets.

I’m going to start this off with what General Smedley Butler had to say to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in possibly the most honest address in history by a general-grade officer:

Old Confederates trying to recall the rebel yell:

Spanish American and Civil War veterans trying to remember how much fun it was.

Then there’s WWI:

I couldn’t find any veterans of the American Indian Wars being interviewed, though there were plenty of them still alive long after the movie camera and recording was invented. I suppose John Wayne will have to do. We veterans all owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude anyway.

There’s something new on the Universal Love front to begin pondering: Hydrox and Shiva-the-cow-cat appear to be slouching into some sort of hanky panky. They’ve been observed lying side-by-side on Jeanne’s bed.

These cats have known one another for more than a decade and never a kind word has passed between them. Hydrox surprised me last year when he began licking the face and inside the ears of Tabby whenever she got aggressive, but Tabby was an entirely different matter. What Shiva’s always wanted was to be left strictly alone by other cats.

Until now. She’s the one jumping on the bed as the party of the second part, not the first.

Also, sometime around 2 am Christmas Eve I heard cat racing noises, sat up in bed and saw Hydrox run from Jeanne’s bedroom into the kitchen. With Shiva in hot pursuit. I shook my head and wiped my eyes in time to see Shiva race out of the kitchen closely pursued by Hydrox, back past Jeanne’s Christmas tree into her bedroom.

I’m convinced they’re teetering on the brink of a Christian Era.

And meanwhile Wavy Gravy Duff, managing editor over at Veterans Today did a wordy Christmas post bragging of his past life without being too obviously obnoxious nor untruthful. For that matter, aside from Jonas Alexis there were no Jew baiting/hating articles during the Christmas truce.

Soooooooo if we’re not teetering on the brink of a Christian era I think we’d better all start digging bomb shelters.

Bob Hope used to do those USO shows every year. In fact Al Jolson died in the aftermath of returning from a USO show in Korea. Fact is, any Christmas entertainment that includes John Wayne jokes and nasty jibes at draft dodgers burning their draft cards is probably worth a rerun anytime anyone is singing songs about Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

Ms. Welch, at least, is about reality, which every USO show should include a taste of.

As an aside, a lot of you probably didn’t know Clint Eastwood’s real identity was Andy Williams. Here he is singing something I thought of as a favorite in 1963.

No Christmas is complete without Clint Eastwood singing Old Bilbao Moon.

Most of you won’t have noticed, but stars and other celestial bodies located within 100 light years of earth have experienced a surprising and by celestial standards, sudden flurry of radio traffic. To those located 100 light years away from earth it’s only a trickle, much of which is in Morse code. If any green three-headed monsters are attempting to decode them they’ll find themselves being brought up-to-date on the attempted allied invasion of Turkey and human slaughter all across Europe.

However, those bodies nearer the earth have already been through the events of WWI. Radio signal traffic is getting a lot more pervasive and the news is good. At least for those located far enough away so’s they haven’t learned yet about the worldwide depression beginning in 1929.

But that’s okay. It’s only in the poorer parts of the world where honest-to-goodness famine has anyone dying of starvation in large numbers. Things are getting better everywhere. Except in Asia, where the Japanese are on a mission of self-discovery. But the people they’re slaughtering by the hundreds of thousands aren’t exactly white, so the radio traffic doesn’t get too excited about it.

Nearer stars, though, have already been through all that. It’s old news. What’s bothering those stars 70 light years away getting radio broadcasts just now about the beginnings of WWII is that it’s beginning to sound repetitious. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago WWI was the big news, and here comes WWII and the only thing different enough to keep it from getting boring is the music. Those stars 70 light years away are really enjoying big bands. They’re dancing to Begin the Beguine and hoping that war will last forever.

Bummer. Those 60 light years away have been through the damned big bands. For them the Mills Brothers, Artie Shaw, Vera Lynn and the Andrews Sisters are fading out of the picture. They’re stuck, those stars 60 light years away, with the dirty bop and Walkin’ My Baby Back Home with Johnny Ray and Nat King Cole. Or Gene Autry Back in the Saddle Again and Mule Train by Frankie Laine.

Those stellar bodies 50 light years away are shaking their heads with relief because the last nasal whines of the Lousiana Hayride have faded. For them it’s Elvis Presley, those British guys, and rock and roll has arrived. They’re limboing and twisting in high society. Chubby Checker, Brook Benton, Chuck Berry and Johnny Cash are all out there 50 light years away doing their early years, their best.

Those stars 50 light years away don’t know how good they have it. They’d best enjoy it while they can because 40 and 30 light years are on their way. Disco and Rap. Yeah, 40 had Willie Nelson and that surge of Austin, Texas cw, but the price was high and it didn’t take long for cw to be something even an 18 legged insect the size of an elephant could enjoy only during sex.

Unfortunately, no matter how few light years remained between them and earth things got fairly stable. What’s headed out to them is more damned rap more damned syrup country music, and a lot of Asian music that sounds like water dripping into a bucket.

We, as a planet have exported just about as much pleasure to those damned aliens as we had in us to do. From here on out is is the musical equivalent of Chinese steel. Even the rubber monster toys have gone second rate.

But hell, it’s all FM anyway. They’ll have to come here if they want to hear it. And they’d best bring along some of that stuff from 50, 60 light years out.

Even the damned wars don’t make any sense. The elevator music of the 21st Century.

Old Jules

Incidentally, for those who are interested, here’s where you can still find that old time rock and roll and a little Red Foley, along with I Didn’t Know God Made Honkytonk Angels:

Main sequence stars have internal zones which are either convective or radiative. Massive stars (with “several” Solar masses) are convective deep in their cores, and are radiative in their outer layers. By comparison, low mass stars (Sol-type F and G and cooler stars) have convective outer layers and radiative cores. Intermediate mass stars (i.e., spectral type A) may be radiative throughout. (More discussion on the internal structure of main sequence stars is available from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.)

Nearby G Stars by DistanceThe following celestial objects are located within 30.7 parsecs, 100 light-years (ly), of Sol.

I swan, every time I get feeling low and remorseful, which I mostly don’t, I just can’t hold onto it. Slips right between my fingers the way a broken egg gets away from a person. Doesn’t even leave any particles of eggshell hanging around to try to pick away so’s to save the goo.

What I’m saying is I could get used to this. Something awful. Here I am, snow outside, me inside. Jeanne never lets it get below 63 degrees F here in the house, which isn’t something I’ve experienced since sometime before Y2K. And I’m having to count calories instead of just counting miniscule particles of sodium.

Heck, when I checked into the hospital here almost a year ago I weighed in at 145 lbs, and didn’t have an ounce of body fat. Fasting before medical tests was agony. And here I am at 190 pounds, being careful not to gain any more. I figure I’m around 10 pounds heavier than is ideal for me. But I’ll take it off gradually, or it will rot off if I croak.

I’m cooking a lot of salt-free stovetop bread, both for bun-type [hamburger-like] or somewhat cake-like. Or pizza-like. And no sodium or low sodium isn’t cramping my style one bit. I can whip out curry fish, curry chicken, ginger beef, sauteed mushrooms, and more kinds of siamin than anyone ever heard of using mung-bean vermicelli and no sodium chicken or beef broth.

Jeanne found some extremely low-sodium Swiss cheese and I’ll confess I almost found myself wallowing in ecstacy with the first, pizza, then omelet that resulted soon thereafter.

Whip over to the double-sink with hot and cold running water, spang wash all the dirties quicker than I can tell about it. Sheeze.

Here I am gazing out the window, Otis Redding playing on the gramaphone, Hydrox snoring on his wool old-man army blanket. Shiva the cow cat nosing around finding things of interest under Jeanne’s Christmas tree, curling up on the ‘tree skirt’ [an item I never knew existed].

So here I am trying to work up a good pessimism but it escapes me. Got an old Frederick Pohl novel [Far Shore of Time] about a third read. Finished a pretty good biography of Captain Woodes Rogers, a surprisingly scholarly piece of work by David Cordingly. Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean. Thinking of passing it on to one of Jeanne’s sons, it’s so fun reading.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not falling into any pit of joy, getting snagged up by the trap of hope. I’m just muddling along grateful as hell it’s so warm in here, watching it snow.

Welcome

I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.